Jason Adams didn’t like Monster Squad all that much, at least in part because kids called each other “faggot” in it. I’ll admit that my main reaction is “that’s how kids talk, so maybe lighten up a bit.” This despite being absolutely ruthless in weeding out uses of the word “gay” as an epithet on the Wizard message boards where I am a moderator, for example. IIRC it was mainly the asshole bullies in the movie who used the word, if that matters.
We all have sort of real-world hot-button issues we’re more sensitive about when they come up in a horror context. Frex, Jason couldn’t bring himself to cheekily salute the curb-stomping from American History X, but was okay with tipping the proverbial bowler hat to Alex crushing a woman’s face with a ceramic penis in A Clockwork Orange. In my case I’m really not crazy about killing animals, with children in second place, and if I get the sense that the filmmaker is getting off on violence against women, I tune out.
Anyway, what do we think of this?
I think you’re a bunch of homos. LOL
Jinkies, it’s an all-me post!
Re: Monster Squad – I didn’t hate it, I just think I’d have liked it much more if I’d been ten when I’d seen it, as most people who love it seem to have been. 30 year old me watching it just kept seeing everything they ripped off from other movies and how thin the story was. It just kinda felt like something was missing, and I think that something missing was a 10 year old’s imagination filling in the blanks. If I’d never seen Goonies til this year I probably wouldn’t love it as deeply as I do having watched it a thousand times as a kid.
As for the “faggot” thing, I don’t disagree that kids talk like that; hell I talked like that. It just, and there’s not really anything I can do to make it not, takes me out of a movie every time. It’s kinda like having the movie spit in my face. And the “bullies” in MS were far too defanged as bullies for the movie to justify, in my opinion, letting them sling that word around. But yeah, I know that back then it wasn’t a big deal. It’s a weird relationship I have to the word. I get it, I get why it was “okay” for them to use it, but it bothers me all the same.
With the “AHX vs. Clockwork” scenes (and I knew I was setting a trap of hypocrisy for myself when I couldn’t do the AHX scene), I really do think they’re so different in tone that my comfort level with the latter over the former could be justified. The Clockwork scene is SO over the top and blatant in its intentions – he’s hitting her with a giant penis, for god’s sake. I just can’t take that scene literally. But the AHX scene comes across as too real for me.
The tone of the Clockwork Orange thing is also totally different, the music, etc. Neither of the the two scenes actually show the audience much of what happens, but the American History X one does its best to make you imagine the consequences, with the closeup of the guy putting his teeth on the curb. There might even be a little sound as they make contact, but then again, that might just be my mind filling in details, which we all know is a lot worse than anything movies can actually show you.
Jason:
You’re almost certainly right you’d have enjoyed the movie more if you’d first seen it as a kid. I’ve heard that from a couple of grown-up types who first saw it thanks to the recent resurgence of interest in it. And obviously your beef with the f-word makes a lot of sense, though I think you’re being too hard on the filmmakers viz the bullies’ use of it–they’re not, like, the crazy sociopathic bullies of It, but they ARE assholes, and calling Horace a faggot is something assholes would do. I got called a faggot a lot by kids just like EJ and Derek in this movie.
Jason and Joakim:
The Clockwork scene is definitely a lot “lighter” than the AHX scene for all the reasons you cite. But now that I’m a grown-up I wonder about that fact a lot. I don’t think I’ve watched the movie in years and years, and when I was younger I didn’t really grok the true horror of rape. I’m not convinced the over-the-top tone of this scene and the various other violence-against-women scenes DOES make them less disturbing, but I’d need to see it again to confirm that.